Like Old Times
by Bhavana331
Summary: Combo of ficlets, drabbles, and oneshots chronicling the friendship-turned-love of Lin and Tenzin. Pre-LOK Linzin.
1. Moon Peaches and Making Friends

**The past relationship of Lin and Tenzin is something I find so intriguing. Here's my attempt to shed light on their old relations: the childhood, falling in love, and eventually falling out of it. This will be a series of one-shots chronicling that love.**

**The cover art was done by Minuiko on deviantart!**

** Please read and review!**

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"Tenzin, this is Lin- Aunt Toph's daughter. Remember her?" Aang nudged his toddling son toward the little girl in Toph's lap. Tenzin frowned and clutched onto his father's Air Nomad robes, shy as always. Aang chuckled and gently eased the fabric out of his son's chubby hands. "Go on and say hi, buddy. You're just about the same age." Lin hopped out of her mother's grasp and waddled over to Tenzin, who once again hid behind his father's figure. Removing her thumb from her mouth, Lin grabbed ahold of Tenzin's hand and coaxed him out from behind the Avatar.

"I'm bored." The little earthbender declared. "Play with me." Tenzin looked up at Aang, who gave his three-year-old son a smile and a nod of encouragement. Unknown to the two children, this wasn't their first encounter- they had met multiple times since their infancy. It was only now that they were old enough to actually form coherent sentences and recognize familiar faces. Tenzin shyly led Lin to his bedroom to show off his favorite toys. The two kids plopped themselves onto the sealskin rug and soon grew restless again after a short time of playing with Tenzin's playthings.

"I'm bored again, Tenzin." Lin announced, tossing the plush sabertooth moose-lion to the side of the bedroom. Tenzin scrambled to pick up his favorite stuffed animal, a gift from Uncle Sokka, appalled that his new playmate would toss his FooFooCuddlyPoops so carelessly.

"Lin, that was not nice."

Lin shrugged. "I'm hungry, and I don't want to play with the stuffed animals anymore."

Tenzin wandered over to his window and beckoned for his friend to follow.

"Do you like moon peaches? My mommy has a moon peach tree." He pointed to a tall tree dotted with ivory colored fruit in his mother's prized garden. The little girl's emerald eyes widened at the mention of her favorite snack.

"Moon peaches? That's the bestestest food in the world!" She clapped her hands together in excitement. Tenzin placed a finger to his lips. "Shh. Mommy doesn't like us eating them before dinner. We need to be sneaky." Lin grinned at her new friend.

"You have spunk, kid." She announced, while holding onto Tenzin's hand as he clumsily created a gentle gust of air that blew the duo outside and into the garden through the window. Lin looked at Tenzin, awestruck. "That was a neat trick!"

Tenzin smiled humbly. "All I do is wave my hand and say 'blow' and then wind comes!" he explained, not knowing really what it meant to airbend. Hand in hand, the playmates walked over to the moon peach tree. They craned their necks back, noticing that the moon peaches were a lot higher up off the ground than they had anticipated.

Tenzin frowned. "How are we supposed to reach the moon peaches now?" Lin cocked her head to the side and went up and threw her little arms around the trunk of the tree.

"Maybe if we shake the tree, the moon peaches will fall down!" She suggested, hopping up and down while hanging onto the tree, trying rather fruitlessly, to shake the delectable fruits from the branches.

While the shaking of the branch did nothing to budge the tree trunk, the hopping, Tenzin noticed, made the ground vibrate enough to make the stems of the fruits wobble slightly. At this revelation, the young airbender grew excited. "Keep jumping, Lin!" He waved his arms around, repeatedly shouting "blow!" and in effect, creating tiny breezes which shook the fruits even further. To their delight, the moon peaches on the lowest branches began toppling to the ground.

"Aang, do you have any idea where Tenzin and Lin are?" Katara asked her husband, who was in the middle of giving his eldest son a lecture.

"They're just in his room, aren't they?" Aang answered his wife before turning back to his son. "What did we learn today?" Bumi sulked in his seat, annoyed.

"That I shouldn't tie Kya's hair to heavy objects when she's not looking." Aang rolled his eyes.

"I hope you've learned your lesson. Go apologize to your sister." He sent Bumi out of the room and faced to his wife again.

"Aang, that's just it- they're not in Tenzin's room." Katara looked at her husband, lines of worry etched across her forehead. Aang rose from his chair, now equally as concerned.

"They couldn't have wandered far. Did you check outside?"

When the young parents did make it outdoors to the garden, they found Tenzin and Lin lying on the grass beneath the moon peach tree. Katara quickly scanned the area. There were moon peach pits scattered all over the garden while the bottom half of the fruit tree was completely barren. The kids' swollen stomachs and sticky faces told the rest of the story.

Tenzin yawned sleepily in his father's arms. "Dada, I made wind happen and Lin made the ground shake." Lin was already fast asleep in Katara's arms, worn out from the whole adventure.

"Something tells me they figured out how to manipulate bending to get what they want." Katara remarked, upset that her baby boy procured his favorite snack and spoiled his dinner but also relieved and overjoyed to find both children after being worried for all of twenty minutes. After a necessary cleaning up of both the garden and the toddlers, the couple put the exhausted children to sleep.

A few hours later, Toph returned to pick up her daughter from her playdate. Lin, now awake, wandered over to her mother. Toph rested Lin against her hip and spoke to her.

"Uncle Twinkletoes tells me you and Tenzin had quite the adventure today." Lin nodded, beaming at Tenzin. After slightly cringing at his old nickname, Aang noted that Tenzin was not quite as shy around Lin as he had been in the morning.

"I like you Lin." Tenzin proclaimed.

"You're okay for a boy." Lin acknowledged with a yawn, resting her head against her mother's shoulder and falling back asleep.


	2. Weekend With the Beifongs

Short fic about pre-LOK Lin and Tenzin as teenagers and the antics that ensue when they visit Lin's grandparents at the Beifong estate.

Many thanks to my beta, **PlainSimpleGarak**.

cover art by **Minuiko** on deviantart.

**Chapter 2**

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"Mom, do I _have_ to go visit my grandparents?" thirteen-year-old Lin Beifong sulked as her mother prepared her suitcase. "I mean, I love them and everything, but Grandma always tries to put me in dresses and frilly outfits and she doesn't understand the joy of running barefoot."

Toph paused for a second while packing a valise for her daughter's trip to her parents' home, suddenly questioning if sending Lin there by herself was a good idea. While Toph certainly had a strained relationship with her parents as a child, in recent years things had been remarkably better. Her parents sought her out soon after The War ended. Their tearful reunion and promises to be more accepting of Toph's lifestyle marked the turning of a new leaf for the relationship. However, that didn't mean Toph's parents weren't disappointed when they learned of her unplanned pregnancy; or that her mother stopped trying to introduce her to well-to-do noblemen, despite Toph's protests otherwise. Her parents definitely tried to be agreeable, but Toph could see clear as day that her lifestyle was still hard for her parents to accept. The silver lining was that her parents adored their granddaughter. While she and Lin had visited Lao and Poppy Beifong on multiple occasions, this would be the first instance where Lin would be going alone. Toph worried that her parents would find Lin difficult to handle, especially since Lin took after her mother in many ways. Toph turned to her daughter with a nod of reassurance. "I know Grandma Poppy can be overbearing, but she _does_ love you, kid."

"Mom, I just don't know if I can handle being with them for an entire weekend by myself! What if they don't want me earthbending?"

"Oh, suck it up, Lin. It's just a weekend and your grandparents have been insisting on this for years. You may as well go so they quit bugging me about it."

Lin was about to protest again when Tenzin burst in the door of the Republic City apartment. "Kya brought a boy home and dad's freaking out. He even called Uncle Sokka over. Can I hang here for a while?"

Toph and Lin didn't hide their amusment at the situation. With the beauty of her mother and the charisma of her father, Kya certainly didn't make Aang's goal of isolating his only daughter from the male species easy.

"I hope for that boy's sake that Twinkletoes goes easy on him. He nearly interrogated the last one to tears," Toph joked. Chuckling, Tenzin relaxed a little. Lin motioned for him to sit next to her on the bed. Sitting down, Tenzin's eyes darted toward the suitcase that Toph had just finished packing.

"Are you going on a vacation, Aunt Toph?"

"I wish, but nope. Lin here is going to visit her grandparents for a couple days."

Tenzin's eyes widened in surprise. "Lin, you didn't tell me you were going away for the weekend."

Lin frowned and let out an exasperated sigh. "I didn't say anything because I was hoping I wouldn't really have to go."

Tenzin lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned closer to Lin- "It's times like these that you should be glad your mom's blind and can't see you shooting daggers with your eyes," he joked, hoping to coax a smile out of his friend.

Lin stifled a laugh and dealt Tenzin an affectionate elbow-jab. "Well you got me to smile, but I'm still miffed about going."

"Maybe it'll be fun. I mean, your grandparents have visited before and they seem like genuinely nice people."

Lin sighed. "You don't _get_ it, Tenzin. They're nice, but they don't know me at all. Grandma Poppy is going to make me dress in the most froufrou outfits. _Lace_, Tenzin. Have you ever seen me in _lace_? And if I know Grandpa Lao, he's going to make me accompany him to a fancy dinner party with all the big-shots of the Earth Kingdom."

Tenzin cringed. Elegant and graceful really weren't adjectives that anyone who knew Lin would use to describe her. Lin at a high-society function was no doubt a disaster waiting to happen. "Maybe it won't be that bad?" he weakly offered his support.

"No, Tenzin. Don't try and downplay it. It really is that bad."

"Lin, maybe you'd like to ask Twinkletoes Jr. here if he'd like to go with you." Toph suggested.

Lin's eyes immediately brightened. "I don't know why I didn't think of that, Tenzin, you _have_ to come with me."

"I don't know, Lin . . ."

"Tenzin. Don't make me beg. If you're my friend at all, you'll come with me and ease my misery. How am I going to get through an entire weekend without my best friend and favorite punching bag?"

Lin grew increasingly frustrated at her friend's unwillingness to just shut up and go along with it.

"Okay, I guess, only since you're begging and all." Tenzin smirked, amused at Lin's desperation.

"Don't make me earthbend you out the window," Lin threatened, with the slightest hint of a smile in her voice that let Tenzin know she wasn't serious.

Tenzin arose from the bed and nodded toward the door. "I'd guess I'd better get home and pack for the weekend then."

Toph shoved the suitcase toward her daughter. "You might as well take Lin along. We were going to head over to ask your dad for a lift to the Earth Kingdom anyway," she reasoned. Lin shrugged and followed Tenzin to the door, suitcase in hand.

"Go easy on your grandparents, okay?" Toph warned Lin.

"Yeah, yeah, mom. I'll try." Lin gave her mother a quick hug before heading out the door with Tenzin.

Tenzin whistled to call Oogi and airbended Lin's suitcase onto the bison's saddle. As Tenzin got settled behind the reins, Lin took a seat next to him and asked, "Are your dad and uncle still at home with Kya and her new fling?"

"Yeah, probably, why?"

Lin shrugged. "No reason, I just want to see if this guy cries like the last one."

Tenzin rolled his eyes with a tiny smile. "Glad to see you're back to your old self."

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Thanks for reading, and thanks again to my wonderful beta PlainSimpleGarak.

Constructive criticism and thoughts are always appreciated :)

Chapter 3 should be up soon.


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